Drop Dead Gorgeous Read online

  “Hold my place,” he told me, bending his head to give me a firm, warm kiss that involved some tongue. “When I get back, I want to pick up where we left off.” Then he was gone, firmly closing the front door behind him. A few seconds later I heard the Avalanche roar to life and the wheels bark a little as he shot away from the curb.

  Sighing, I went over to the door and locked it. Without him here distracting me, maybe I could think of some way to simplify my immediate future. Breaking a leg might work, because then the wedding would be put off until the cast was gone. Breaking his leg sounded even better. But I’d had enough of pain; I wanted to concentrate on the good stuff, on getting married, settling into our routine together, having a family.

  Instead I had to concentrate on playing marriage counselor, a job for which I wasn’t remotely qualified.

  Manipulation, on the other hand…a little emotional blackmail here, a little guilt there…I could do that.

  I called Mom. “Where’s Jazz living now?” I asked. I didn’t explain the problem to her—she was, after all, Sally’s best friend. This was between Wyatt and me, our own private bone of contention.

  “With Luke,” Mom replied. Luke is the third Arledge son. The kids were refusing to take sides, which was annoying Sally and Jazz, who both felt misunderstood and completely justified in their actions. “I gather Jazz is putting a crimp in Luke’s style.”

  Luke was also the wildest of the Arledge bunch. I don’t mean wild as in drugs and getting into trouble, I mean wild as in definitely not tamed, uninterested in settling down, and with a social life that should have already caused permanent damage to his back. He wouldn’t be at all happy to have his father living with him.

  Why on earth had Jazz picked Luke to live with? Any of his children would have opened their homes to him. Matthew and Mark were both married and had families, but they also each had guest bedrooms, so the arrangement wouldn’t have been horrible. John, the youngest, was working toward his master’s degree and lived in a rented house with two other graduate students, so maybe living with him wouldn’t have been so great. Tammy had been married about a year, and she and her husband had a large house in the country, but no children, so there was plenty of room there.

  On the other hand, if Jazz wanted to make Sally fret about what he might be doing, living with Luke was the way to do it.

  That gave me hope, because if Jazz was trying to make Sally jealous, then he hadn’t walked away from the marriage. He was mad as hell, though.

  Luke would be more than willing to help, I thought. If Jazz was cramping his style, he’d want his father out of there, and what better way to accomplish that than by helping me? I was doing a good thing here; who wouldn’t want to help?

  I looked up Luke’s number in the phone book, then thought better of the idea and called Tammy instead. Caller ID makes being sneaky more complicated, and I didn’t want Jazz to see my name on Luke’s phone. Therefore, I needed his cell number.

  When Tammy answered I explained what I was trying to do—though not why—and she thought it was a good idea. “God knows we haven’t been able to get anything accomplished,” she said wearily, meaning her and her brothers. “Mom and Dad are so stubborn, it’s been like beating my head against the wall. Good luck.” She gave me Luke’s cell number, we chatted for a while longer about the different arguments that had been used against her wayward parents, then hung up.

  When Luke answered his cell phone, I went through the explanation again. “Hold on,” he said, then I listened to a variety of noises that ended with the sound of a door closing. “I’m outside now, where I can talk.”

  “Jazz?” I asked, just to make certain. I didn’t have to elaborate.

  “Oh, yeah.” He sounded weary.

  “He won’t be suspicious because you’ve gone outside to talk?”

  “No, I’ve done that a lot lately.”

  “Is he seeing anyone? Making noises about actually filing for divorce?”

  “Nada. For one thing, he can’t live with me if he’s going to cheat on Mom. And for another, he gets sick to his stomach and throws up when he starts talking about them not ever living together again. This whole fu—” He caught himself before the f-bomb exploded. “—situation is stupid. They love each other. What the hell this standoff is accomplishing is beyond me.”

  “They’re showing each other how upset they are,” I explained. I sort of understood it, except they were going to extreme lengths to make their separate points.

  “They’re also showing the world that they’re idiots.” Luke was definitely not a happy camper.

  I bypassed that comment, not wanting to get into the question of idiocy. Personally, I was on Sally’s side. Luke wanted his parents to work things out, but he was a guy; he probably thought his mother was taking interior decorating too seriously. I’m not sure it’s possible to take decorating too seriously, but I’m not a guy.

  “Has Jazz said anything that might hint how he wants this to play out? Does he want Sally to apologize, or just call and ask him to come back?”

  “In a way, this is all he talks about, but he doesn’t say anything new, you know? It’s the same thing, over and over again. He was trying to do something nice for her and she blew up in his face, wouldn’t listen to reason, then she went crazy, etcetera, etcetera. Anything useful there?”

  Only that Jazz still had no appreciation for how hard Sally had worked collecting and refinishing her antique furniture. “Maybe,” I said. “I have an idea, anyway. How about your mom? What has she said? What’s your take, as a guy, on this whole thing?”

  He hesitated, and I knew he was struggling to be fair, to not take sides. Luke’s a nice guy, despite his hot sheets. As far as I was concerned, his sheets qualified as community property, and by that I mean an entire community. When he finally did settle down, I thought I should probably advise his chosen love to burn all his sheets, because that kind of nasty can’t be boiled out.

  “I kind of see both sides,” he finally said, pulling my thoughts away from laundry problems. “I mean, I know Mom worked really hard refinishing the furniture, and she loves antiques. On the other hand, Dad was trying to do something nice for her. He knew he was clueless about decorating, so he went to an expert, and he paid a small fortune to have their bedroom redone.”

  Okay, this was interesting; my vague idea was getting firmer. I also had an ace in the hole I could pull out if my idea didn’t work.

  My phone beeped to let me know there was an incoming call. “Thanks, this has been a help,” I said.

  “No problem. Anything to get him back home.”

  We said our good-byes and I flashed to the incoming call. “Hello.”

  There was a pause, followed by click, then a moment of dead air, then finally the dial tone. Puzzled, I checked the Caller ID, but since I’d already been on the phone the call hadn’t registered. Mentally I shrugged; if whoever it was wanted to talk, he or she could call back.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon being bored out of my skull. I didn’t have anything there I was dying to read, and it was Sunday, so of course there was nothing interesting on television. I played some games on the computer. I looked at shoes on the Zappos website, and bought a pair of snazzy blue boots. If I ever took up line dancing, I was set. I looked up some sea cruises, just in case we ever had a chance for a honeymoon, because so far this year it didn’t look possible. Then I looked up birth control, to see how long it would take my body to return to normal after I stopped taking the Pill, because if possible I wanted to time my babies so I’d have them in months that had pretty birthstones. Mothers have to think about things like this, you know.

  My interest in online things exhausted, I tried to find something on television to watch. Frankly, I’m no good at being a lady of leisure. The prolonged inactivity was eating at me, making me feel as if my muscles were getting cramped and stiff. I couldn’t even do yoga because bending over wasn’t a fun thing to do right now; the increased pressure